Of Geico, Aflac, and Rambaldi
by Kityye
Summary: Weiss ties Geico Car Insurance to Alias. No, really! Oh, and Marshall does the Robot. Set midseason four, with Prophet Five spoilers. SV, WN, MC
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, JJ Abrams does. Please don't sue me.  
Author's Note: takes place mid season four, spoilers up to then

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Of Geico, Aflac, and Alias: Prologue

By: Kityye

The meeting table was gradually becoming like King Arthur's round table. Syd remembered when it had been just Vaughn and her, back in the warehouse when it had all started. Then, her father had joined them. As the rest of the SD-6 gang joined the CIA, briefings had expanded to include Marshall and Dixon and a conference room. The third year (or fifth year, depending on how you counted Syd's two missing years with the Covenant) Carrie and Weiss had been included in the missions so often that they'd become part of the group gathered around the edges of the room. And then this year Sloane and Nadia were integrating themselves. The nine of them together were a noisy, irreverent group.

Well, except for Sloane and Mr. Bristow. Although, occasionally, the two of them could be induced (usually when plied with large quantities of hard liquor, which NEVER happened on job time) to spout noisy reminisces. Also, Dixon had gained a perturbing, detached, Adult air when faced with the entire gang. Syd shuddered as she remembered when Lauren Reed had been part of the daily briefing ritual. Those days were best forgotten.

However, on an average day like today, the office was currently faced with six people between of the ages of 25 and 35 in relatively high spirits. Sloane, Jack, and Dixon entered the conference room and most of the good-natured teasing tapered off. After all, the six were also professionals.

Jack Bristow began by shutting the door firmly, and then locking it. Sloane stood at his seat and waited for Jack and Dixon to sit, while everyone else coughed, shifted in their seats, and generally continued their earlier discussion on a quieter scale. Sloane waited out Marshall's particularly long explanation of why Superman was weakened by Kryptonite ("Oh, sorry, Boss. I'll shut up now. Shutting up. Now.")

"Today we have an unusual assignment," Sloane began in his dry voice.

"Told you," whispered Weiss to Nadia, who giggled. Nadia tended to giggle at whatever Weiss said. There had been no emergencies for three days, nothing to call them in earlier and keep them out later – a highly abnormal state of affairs. The agents had speculated as to why the briefing was actually going to be held at the original time set for it.

There was another Sloane stare before he continued. "The nature of our job involves keeping secrets. Recently, however, the secrets of this team have been causing trouble during our operations."

Everyone began looking suspiciously at everyone else, while trying to look innocent at the same time. "On the last mission, secrets nearly killed Sydney and Nadia." Syd grinned weakly and Nadia sunk down in her seat as everyone transferred their generally suspicious looks specifically to them. Sloane continued: "In the interest of not having secrets killing my agents while they're in the field, we are going to divulge ourselves of them." Swiftly, the suspicious looks were transferred from Syd and Nadia to Sloane again, melting as they went to facial expressions of shock and horror. Jack and Dixon looked grim.

"Um, sir," Vaughn said into the long silence, "Is that safe? I mean, there's the whole 'two can keep a secret if one of them is dead' thing."

"And we're, like," Weiss did a quick head-count, "Nine. Way more than two. And I have no desire to go killing any of you."

"Death is what we're trying to avoid," Jack Bristow interjected. "Last week, Nadia shot the Covenant agent who had vital information he was about to pass onto Sloane, who would have used it to verify information coming from K-Directorate, which would have let us know our Intel was compromised, and Marshall could have come up with an anti-Doberman device so that Sydney would have been able to steal the Ring of Power (that's not a name we devised, mind you) and we would have prevented the enslavement of tens of innocent people."

"Cousin's third-uncle's friend's niece's boyfriend's mother," muttered Weiss. Vaughn elbowed him.

"Now we have to go rescue them," Dixon added sternly, over Weiss.

"Point being," Sloane again took control of the conversation, "The whole fiasco could have been prevented. I've taken the liberty of securing appropriate clearances for everyone here." Sloane picked up a sheaf of file-folders and began passing them out. "We will begin by writing down all of our double-statuses, alliances, contacts, things we know that nobody else does. We will proceed each day by learning another person's life. In the end, nobody will be able to jeopardize another's side-mission again. This will be a lengthy process." Sloane had finished going around the circle and again stood behind his chair. "Today, we prepare our presentations on ourselves. Tomorrow, we start going around the circle, one person a day." To Carrie's look of intense concentration, he added, "There will be a test."

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AN2: So, I started this story a year ago, and it's about half-finished. If I get lovely reviews, I will know if I should post more of what I've written (and continue to finish it) or give up on the idea entirely. If you can't tell, it's going to be amusing. And I have great plans in store. So review! 


	2. Chapter One: Carrie

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, JJ Abrams and George Lucas do. Please don't sue me.  
Author's Note: takes place mid season four but discusses season-five spoilers

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**Of Geico, Aflac, and Rambaldi**

**By: Kityye**

**Chapter One: Carrie**

Mrs. Bowman-Flinkman seemed flustered to be the first person to give a presentation. She had never been the center of attention among all the CIA agents. She hadn't actually spoken at one of their meetings in a long, long time, since back when she worked for the NSA, at least. And the task she had been given was neither specific nor easy.

She started out by greeting everybody after they sat down. She was at least as nervous as Marshall was when confronted by groups, but she concealed it a little better. Marshall grinned encouragement at her; the others greeted her back, trying to set her at ease. Well, Sloane and Jack merely tried not to be intimidating. Sloane leaned back in his chair, and Jack allowed his face to relax from his poker face to his normal face. Overall, the room's normally intense atmosphere was gentled for the quietest member of their group.

"Hi. I worked for the NSA for four years before I was transferred to the CIA, where I worked for two and a half years. My specialty was figuring out what things do; my favorite assignment involved putting together all of the Rambaldi artifacts into a world-destroying creation. Finally, I was recruited to APO with the rest of you and Sloane gave me a new task."

She pulled out a remote control and all of the computer monitors in the room winked on. She pressed a button: the screens stayed blue. She pressed it again. Nothing happened. During the interlude, Weiss poked Vaughn as if to say, "Didn't I tell you Sloane was up to something?" Vaughn shot him a cold look.

Marshall stood up and took the remote, turning it over and opening the battery cover. He took something small and red out of it and put the cover back on before handing the remote back to his wife. She pressed the button; a slide-show came up.

"Sorry," Marshall said, holding up the red thing, but Carrie interrupted him before he could go on a tangent explaining what he'd done to the remote.

"Sloane told me about something called Prophet Five. It was a project that happened in the 1970s. Brilliant scientists and linguists were recruited to de-code a five-hundred year old document on advanced genetics."

A picture of Rambaldi's Page 47 displayed itself on the computer screen. It shrank into nothing and a picture of a greasy-looking beatnik took its place.

"I was able to trace the life of one of the scientists: Aldo Desantis. He worked for Prophet Five for three years before disappearing entirely. He deciphered one of Rambaldi's medical inventions and was experimenting with it when the trail stopped."

Nadia raised her hand. "What medical invention?"

"A cryogenic chamber." Carrie was prepared for the blank stares of the spies (who were not medical students) and pressed a button on her remote. "Think Han Solo."

A short clip began playing from The Empire Strikes Back of Han Solo being raised out of the carbon-freezing chamber. The Wookie roared and C3PO said, "Oh. They've encased him in Carbonite. He should be quite well protected. If he survived the freezing process, that is." The clip ended.

Weiss looked like Christmas had come early. Sloane looked deeply disturbed and Jack seemed affronted that popular culture had breeched the building's perimeter. Dixon seemed amused in an I-can't-believe-you-just-did-that way, while Vaughn looked like he understood cryogenic chambers now. Sydney had a dreamy I-love-Han-Solo look on her face; Nadia simply seemed confused (she'd grown up in another country and had a deprived childhood). Marshall, who had suggested the comparison, was incredibly smug.

Carrie cleared her throat in order to bring attention back to her and continued: "The cryogenic chamber disappeared from records a week after Desantis did. This opens up three scenarios: he was killed so he couldn't talk, he was put in the chamber, or he destroyed the chamber and went into hiding. It is possible he is still alive, but I have been unable to trace his whereabouts."

Vaughn looked thoughtful. Sydney cocked a questioning eyebrow at him, but he didn't notice. She resolved to ask him about it later.

"The rest of the scientists working on the project were hunted down and murdered," said Carrie. "I have been unable to find a living link to Prophet Five, yet the group probably still exists. Given their previous interest in Rambaldi, it seems likely we will come across them someday."

Heads nodded in agreement around the table.

"Any questions?" asked Carrie.

Weiss raised his hand. "Who is the more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?"

Dixon collapsed into helpless giggles, while Marshall counter-quoted Weiss with "Ancient weapons and hokey religions are no match for a good blaster at your side," and Vaughn buried his head in his arms and pretended he didn't know Weiss. Jack Bristow declared an ending to the meeting and Nadia, Sydney, and Sloane fled as fast as they could without actually running.

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Yoda says: Good, reviews are. More chapters, good too are. Review, you must, if more chapters, you wish to recieve. 

Kityye says: Please?


	3. Chapter Two: Marshall

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, JJ Abrams and Warner Brothers do. Please don't sue me.  
Author's Note: takes place mid season four

* * *

**Of Geico, Aflac, and Rambaldi **

**By: Kityye**

**Chapter Two: Marshall**

Marshall Flinkman had secured the briefing room to prepare for his presentation forty minutes ago. The first thing he'd done was close the blinds.

He opened the door at exactly 2:00 pm to the gaggle of agents waiting outside. His wife was the first person to enter the re-decorated room. Sloane was the last.

The walls were covered with pictures of Marshall in different tourist spots around the world. Each was labeled with month and year. Sydney smiled as she found the ones she'd taken for him.

Marshall had a laptop open on the table, in the center of the room. "Welcome, everyone," he chirped. "I'm here to give you a crash-course in my secrets." He pressed a button on a tiny remote in his hand and the monitors on the back wall turned on. The spies didn't miss the flick of his thumb that controlled the devices.

The first slide was titled "My Secrets" in yellow letters on a blue background. The second… well, nobody had the heart to tell Marshall that divulging secrets did not include his first crush on his third grade teacher.

"This is the first secret I successfully kept," Marshall said proudly.

Sloane's face grew more and more expressionless as Marshall ran down his list of early secrets: doing others' homework in such ways that the teacher never suspected he was responsible for ten papers turned in at the same time, sneaking out of the house at night to drink, the men at the bar teaching him how to count cards and hustle outsiders at pool. On the slide of a college party (complete with picture; Marshall's secret was that it was the only time he tried LSD) Sloane finally snapped.

"Marshall! Fast forward to your time in the CIA!" Carrie blushed and scrunched up in her seat, as if she were responsible for Marshall's presentation. Of course, being married to him, she probably felt as though she were. Sydney and Nadia looked disappointed; it appeared they'd enjoyed the life and times of Marshall Flinkman thus far.

"Yes, sir, Mr. Sloane, sir," Marshall stuttered, going to the laptop and turning off PowerPoint. He brought up a different program and opened a file called, "CIA SECRETS". "I, um, was afraid you might get bored, so I made an animated movie to explain my connections with the technology agents of terrorist groups worldwide." Marshall pressed "play" on the program and returned to his seat to take a drink of water. The lights in the room dimmed.

A mini-Marshall waddled onscreen and waved. Then, it walked past CIA-issue pictures of various tech-leaders. Mini-Marshall pointed out what each man and woman was brilliant at (Marshall himself being a Jack-of-all-trades when it came to technology). The letters of the techs' names sometimes swirled into or out of existence on screen, and the transitions from person to person were unique. The film ran for about fifty minutes. At the end, mini-Marshall came back onscreen – only to be erased by a pencil-eraser bit by bit. Mini-Marshall fought back (much as Daffy Duck fought from being erased in a Loony Tunes cartoon). Marshall chuckled at the animation. Carrie reddened again when he was the only one in the room who found his creation amusing. Well, Sydney seemed to be smiling. But, then, she'd also enjoyed that poem about keys…

The movie was over, and the lights came back up. Marshall stood and asked, "Are there any questions?"

Dixon sat up abruptly, dabbing at the drool gathered at the corner of his mouth. "What? Where am I?"

Marshall's face fell. "Didn't you like the animation?"

Guiltily, Vaughn and Weiss stopped poking each-other (a game that had kept them occupied since the mini-Marshall had come on-screen for the finale), folding their hands in front of them.

"Of course we liked it, Marshall," Vaughn said.

"It was… very like Bugs Bunny," Weiss added, clearing his throat.

Marshall still frowned uncertainly.

"It was fine, Marshall," Sydney reassured her friend with a smile.

Jack glanced at his watch. They'd been in the room for three hours. He looked meaningfully at his boss.

"Perhaps, Marshall, you should wrap things up…" suggested Sloane.

"Ah, yes, well, I have one more treat for you. Literally." Marshall scrambled at the papers in front of him and held up eight light-pink papers, like carbon copies.

"Now, these babies are delicious. You know how in the movies, you're supposed to eat the really classified stuff after you read it? Well," Marshall smiled proudly at his captive audience, "I made you files of bubble-gum paper." He began passing them out, one to each member of the group. "Did you ever get the base-ball cards printed on bubble-gum? I once collected them, but my younger sister ate my three best, and…" Marshall intercepted the LOOK his wife was sending him. "Anyways, this is the short version of devices I have made in the past." Marshall took the final "paper" and nibbled on the edge. "Mmm, strawberry… Oh! Each page has a different flavor… who got root-beer?" Dixon discreetly laid his on the table in front of him. Sydney tried hers, looking at Vaughn while she did so. He and Weiss read the list and then stuffed the whole page in their mouths.

"Good," Weiss mumbled around the candy.

"Thank you," Marshall beamed.

Sloane took that to be the end, and (thankfully) released the spies to go home.

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AN2: Did you fall asleep during the movie, too? Shame on you! Well, review to tell me how much of it you did see, and I'll think about writing the next chapter while I'm traveling this weekend. Next up: Nadia! 


	4. Chapter Three: Nadia

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, JJ Abrams does. Please don't sue me.

Author's Note: takes place mid season four

Chapter Summary: Due to an impromptu mission with gory results, the spies were not in the office on the day Nadia was supposed to brief them on her secrets.

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**Of Geico, Aflac, and Rambaldi **

**By: Kityye **

**Chapter Three: Nadia**

Directly after Marshall's presentation, Sloane received a call that Sark had been spotted in Honduras boarding a plane for Britain. Immediately, the office deployed – Jack to find out what reason Sark had for traveling, Marshall to set up surveillance, and everyone else to board a plane to Britain so they could try again to defeat the blonde man.

London:

Nadia went into the club with Dixon as her backup, while Carrie and Weiss ran the machinery in the truck and Vaughn and Syd waited with them as outside assistance. Back at APO, Jack hovered over Marshall's satellite surveillance set-up and Sloane was in his office, doing whatever he did while the team was away.

Sark never felt the need for physical disguise, so he was easily located once he entered the club. Nadia pointed the super-spy-x-ray-camera-in-a-gaudy-necklace at the Goons (1, 2, and 3) that Sark was meeting with so Carrie (monitoring the camera from the van) could tell her which one carried the targeted device. Unfortunately for the team, a strobe light was turned on at that point, which screwed up the super-spy-x-ray-camera-in-a-gaudy-necklace and left Nadia relying on her instincts and backup.

Nadia followed Sark out a side door and into a wide warehouse area but Dixon got stuck in the press of frantically writhing dancers before he could follow her. Sydney and Vaughn were sprinting around the building to head off Sark if he came out the back door (Weiss had parked on the other side, by the entrance) when Goon 2 spotted Nadia and gave a shout of warning.

Sark's flair for the dramatic made him turn and wait for the Goons to dispatch the confused-looking woman in high heels and a short, sparkly red dress. Because she didn't seem to be anything other than a confused club-goer looking for the loo, Goon 2 tried to escort her back into the club. Nadia's body became a blur for the thirty seconds it took to knock him out of the fight before he knew there was a fight.

Sydney and Vaughn raced down the second side of the building; they still hadn't found a door yet. Their boots splashed through oily puddles as they turned the final corner.

Goon 3 tried to grab Nadia from behind. He received an elbow to the nose and a kick to the gut, and then slouched unconscious to the ground.

Sark looked apprehensive and Nadia felt a thrill of glee. Only Goon 1 stood between them, and she was sure that the Rambaldi device was still on the Goon, not Sark. She hadn't witnessed the exchange inside the club; presumably the four had retreated to this area for privacy during the trade.

Goon 1 pulled a knife from his boot and approached Nadia warily. He feinted to the right, but swung to the left. Nadia jumped backwards and tried to grab his wrist, but missed. Goon 1 tried again and she blocked his arm with hers. The force of his blow bruised her forearm and drove it lower than she'd expected; the knife bit shallowly into her shoulder. However, now her hands were close enough to the weapon to get one of them on the handle, above Goon 1's. She found that she couldn't counter his force, so she decided to twist her body away and redirect it – into his own gut.

He paused in shock as the knife slid all the way into his belly, and she twisted it for good measure. With a pained gasp, Goon 1 toppled backwards.

Syd and Vaughn were having no luck finding an alternate entrance into the club. There really were no other doors on any of the other three sides, and the front of the building was well-lit and busy with club-goers. They returned to the van to re-think the plan and confer with Jack and Marshall.

Sark was always more of a manager than a grunt. He watched as Nadia knelt and pulled the little leather Rambaldi box out of Goon 1's vest and placed it in her purse. Instead of rushing the wounded APO agent and trying to best her in hand-to-hand combat, he indulged in polite clapping.

"Very nice," he said, "However, there is no exit that isn't under complete surveillance. I suggest you save yourself some pain and give the Rambaldi box to me now."

Nadia shook her head.

Sark sighed. "Very well. We do it the fun way." He turned on his heel and disappeared behind a stack of crates, presumably to get his backup.

Now that she wasn't in mortal danger, Nadia called to Syd using her earpiece. Sydney confirmed that there were no easy exits to the building that they were working on an extraction plan.

There was a thudding of heavy booted feet in the distance, and Nadia began to look for a place to hide. The ceiling was shrouded in darkness high above her, but she didn't see a way to get up there. To her left, a line of grates covered a narrow channel that was currently dry… she lifted one up and dropped into the hole. If she crawled on her hands and knees, and kept her head down, she's just fit. She pulled the grating back into place over her head and began moving foreword.

In the van, Syd is frantic with worry for her sister. Dixon, who was pretending to dance in the strobe light, couldn't be dispatched to look for Nadia until they had a viable rescue plan. Jack, through Marshall, identified the twenty men surveilling the front entrance, and the spies desperately needed another way to get Nadia out.

Nadia's wounded arm burned and her knees were sore from the concrete ground. She paused and held her breath as sharp orders were issued from above. If they looked down, they were guaranteed to see her flashy dress, even in the dim light… but they didn't, and the next time the voice spoke, it said "Clear!" and she felt safe to continue her slow progress. She thought that the tunnel had to be connected to something else, that it was some sort of run-off drain.

Weiss was trying to convince Jack that he, Syd, and Vaughn could easily take out the guards and thus retrieve Nadia, when the woman in question radioed in. Nadia indicated that she had found a human-sized sewage tunnel. It was hard for the spies in the van to hear her over the watery echo that came through their earpieces.

Carrie redirected Marshall to look underground rather than above it, and he quickly sent her the sewage maps. She located Nadia's position by overlaying the terrain map over the sewage maps, and Weiss moved the van to the nearest man-hole, which was several blocks away. Then, Sydney talked her sister through the pitch-black tunnels while Vaughn and Weiss took flashlights and went down the man-hole to meet her. The spies didn't want Nadia to stay in one place, in case Sark guessed where she'd disappeared to.

When a chilled, bloody Nadia emerged supported by Weiss and led by Vaughn, she was taken to the nearest safehouse where her wound was tended. While she received stitches, the two men grabbed their own showers; when she was done being doctored, she too was allowed to shower.

Back at APO, Sloane was happy to hear that his daughter was alive. However, when she came down with a fever and cold, he instantly ordered her to stay at home in bed (where he could keep an eye on her). When she asked him about the presentation she was supposed to do, he told her it could be done later. She worried that she hadn't had time to prepare, and he declared that her presentation would be put off indefinitely and if she didn't hush and eat the soup he'd made for her, he would not let her go on any more missions for the next three weeks.

Nadia shamelessly took advantage of her daughter-of-the-boss status (and after all, she had retrieved the Rambaldi device from Sark) and never gave her conclusive presentation on her life as a spy.

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AN2: Poor Nadia. Who knows what disease she caught down in the sewers? At least her daddy's going to take care of her. Are you going to take care of me and review? 


	5. Chapter Four: Weiss

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, JJ Abrams does. I don't work for Geico or particularly promote them, either. Please don't sue me.  
Author's Note: takes place mid season four

* * *

**Of Geico, Aflac, and Rambaldi **

**By: Kityye**

**Chapter Four: Weiss**

Sydney slid into the room just before Sloane shut the door. She nodded apologies to everyone and caught her breath as she sat in her accustomed seat, between Vaughn and her father. Sloane clicked the lock into place.

Weiss cleared his throat and stood. "Hello. My name is Eric Weiss and I work for the CIA. If you ever try to kill Michael Vaughn, Sydney Bristow, or Nadia Santos, I will hunt you down and destroy you."

The entire room shifted uneasily beneath the weight of Weiss's intensity.

"Since you all know these contacts, I don't anticipate any conflicts of interest." Weiss grinned, lightening the mood he'd set. "Now I have to tell you one other thing." Still smiling, he looked at each person in the room, artistically lengthening the pause. "I just saved ten percent on my car insurance!"

Nadia (freshly recovered from her cold) giggled. Marshall grinned in appreciation. Carrie looked bemused and Vaughn groaned into his hands. Sydney just smiled. Dixon rolled his eyes. Jack retained his steely demeanor, and Sloane waved his hand at Weiss, indicating for him to stop milking the moment and move on.

"In all seriousness," Weiss said, "how many of you also have Geico car insurance?"

Vaughn, Sydney, Nadia, and Marshall raised their hands. Eric nodded at them and they lowered them. "Not only do you save ten percent, you help fund the Gecko in his quest for Rambaldi."

_Hunh?_ seemed to be the general response. Weiss elaborated.

"Basically, when Rambaldi was around, he had faithful followers and mortal enemies. Rambaldi himself put his symbol on his inventions. About a hundred years after Rambaldi was killed, his followers were few and scattered. They were united under one symbol and one organization in 1600. The gecko. It was like a mythical creature for Europe at the beginning of the middle ages. As time passed, the secret society changed. Originally, it was the master creative-people who were interested in Rambaldi. Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, and Charles Dickens were a few. Then, the crime lords got wind of the fact that Rambaldi artifacts were worth a great deal to the right person. They began fighting amongst themselves over him."

"Geico… is a crime-lord looking for Rambaldi?" Dixon asked in disbelief.

"No, I'm not done. The vibe was changing. The crime lords were being exterminated… the age of the businessman was rising! And every person who joined wore the mark of the Gecko. It probably began as a joke – (Weiss adopted the high-pitched voice of a woman) 'Hey! It's not gecko!' (Low voice of a man) 'Then what is it?' (High voice – and giggles) 'It's Geico! Stop calling me!' (back to regular voice, with a triumphant ring) And thus the slogan for the business empire we know as Geico Car Insurance was born!"

Marshall began doing the Robot dance in his seat. His wife slapped his knee when Sloane glared in the tech's direction.

"How did you discover this?" Jack asked. Sydney saw that he was as stunned as they were by the intel, despite the fact that he carefully controlled his voice.

"Yours truly is now the Gecko's right-hand man. Guess who used to be the Gecko's right-hand woman…"

Most everyone drew blanks, rapidly running down their lists of Very Powerful People. They'd just reached the names starting with C when Vaughn said quietly, "Lauren."

Weiss's face softened as he looked at his best friend. Vaughn's expression closed. Weiss nodded. "We discovered she was the mole, and tailed her on her normal activities. One of the places she visited was the Gecko's base of operations, where she appeared to be a high-ranking agent. I was assigned to infiltrate Geico. Since then, we've learned all sorts of interesting things." Weiss glanced at Sloane, as if asking for permission to continue with the classified intel. He got no signal, but went on anyway. "As far as I have been able to discern, the current Gecko is Rambaldi's reincarnation."

Nadia sent Sydney a look that said, "Let's go find this guy and force him to release us from the prophecy." Sydney sent her a quelling glace stating that she needed more information.

"I'm sorry, Weiss, but this is particularly unbelievable. And I've seen many unbelievable things," Syd told him.

"That's the beauty of it," said Weiss. "Nobody believes that an insurance company could have spawned from a secret society of geeks! No offense, Marshall."

Marshall nodded genially at his coworker, and then at everybody else at the table. Nobody was quite sure why; Sydney surmised he was acknowledging the fact that they all knew he was a Geek.

"But," Nadia said, "the reincarnation of Rambaldi?"

"We are 90 sure," insisted Weiss. "Barring a DNA test, we couldn't be any more sure."

"Is there any way to get those things," asked Sydney in an intense voice. Her father glanced at her sharply, but she wasn't paying attention. She had sought Nadia's gaze again and was busy agreeing on details of the mission to seek out the Gecko through quick and minute flicks of her eyeballs.

Weiss missed the feminine eye-conversation and changed topics. "The mark of the Gecko is, naturally, a stick lizard with a triangular head. Usually, it is placed upon the forearm of the believer. Car insurance is the Gecko's cover – just as the bank was yours, Sydney. Only the highest-level managers and supervisors have the mark of the Gecko."

Nadia was first to realize that Weiss had stopped talking and was staring at her and her sister. She cut off the sentence she'd been telepathically sending to Sydney about when and where they were going to jump the Gecko. "What?" she asked guiltily.

Sloane came the closest he had ever come to rolling his eyes without actually committing to the act. "Continue," he told the presenter.

Weiss inclined his head towards his boss. "I have taken the liberty of creating a file of the names and specialties of my underlings at Geico." He picked up a sheaf of folders from the table in front of his seat and passed them out. "Mostly, they are boring and elderly. After you read them, burn the files with the handy-dandy Zippos I included."

Rocking back on his heels, Weiss concluded, "And this is the end of my presentation on myself. I hope you enjoyed."

The agents filed out of the room silently.

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AN2: Bonus points to the people who actually understand Marshall's doing the Robot dance after mention of the old Gecko commercial. Review to tell if you liked it, shot beverages out your nose, or thought it was the dumbest thing you'd ever read... but you'llkeep readinguntil Aflac comes in too and it all ties together neatly... 


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